Battle of the Brains crowns world champions

Emory Kale, 21st April 2009

Los Angeles (CA) - It’s referred to as the Battle of the Brains, a challenge for the world’s top 100 university teams to use open standard technology in designing software that solves real-world problems. Each team of three students faced 11 programming conundrums, with varying degrees of difficulty. St. Petersburg State University of IT, Mechanics and Optics solved nine of the problems to return home with the “world’s smartest” trophy. It remains unclear how the winning group would handle itself when faced with a barrage of wedgies, purple nurples, and wet willies.

The teams were awarded medals based on the number of problems they solved correctly in the shortest amount of time. If you feel up to the challenge, you can find the problems listed here. St. Petersburg State University of IT, Mechanics and Optics solved nine of the problems. We are not sure how much dancing and jubilation accompanied them but it must have been one heck of a party. After all, this was the second time in a row that St. Petes, as they are affectionately known around here, has won the competition.

"Serious problems call for great minds and solutions demand a can-do spirit," said Dr. Bill Poucher, ICPC executive director and professor of the Baylor University, headquarters of the ACM ICPC. "They are athletes of innovation. They don't just measure up. They push the limits and have fun doing it. They pave the way to a smarter planet."

Tsinghua University in China, St. Petersburg State University in Russia, and Saratov State University in Russia finished the competition in second, third, and fourth places and all won Gold medals.

The regional champions are Massachusetts Institute of Technology (North America Region); St. Petersburg State University of IT, Mechanics and Optics (Europe Region); German University in Cairo (Africa and the Middle East Region); Universidad de Buenos Aires - FCEN (Latin America Region); Tsinghua University (Asia Region); and University Melbourne (South Pacific Region).